1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and an ink cartridge therefor. In particular, it relates to a printing apparatus where a plurality of ink cartridges are detachably mountable, and to an ink cartridge used for such a printing apparatus.
2. Related Art
As one type of a printing apparatus such as an ink jet printer, there is a printing apparatus with a plurality of detachably mountable ink cartridges. Each ink cartridge contains the respective ink, and the printing apparatus executes the printing operation with the supply of ink from the mounted ink cartridge.
With such a printing apparatus, it is necessary to avoid a printing process being interrupted when there is no ink stored in the ink cartridge during printing. From the above perspectives, a control portion provided in a printing apparatus body manages a used amount or residual quantity of ink. Further, there is provided a nonvolatile memory storing information showing the used amount or residual quantity of ink in the ink cartridge. This nonvolatile memory may not contain a lot of information due to miniaturization and decrease of cost. Therefore, after storing information showing the used amount or residual quantity of ink in the memory of the printing apparatus body, only appropriate information is written in the non-volatile memory provided in the ink cartridge.
However, in a case a power supply is suddenly forcedly to be cut off due to such as a plug accidentally disconnecting from a socket or for some other reason, information showing a used amount or residual quantity of ink saved in a memory of a printing apparatus body is eliminated. When such a situation arises, the printing apparatus may not correctly manage the used amount or residual quantity of ink, and there will exist possibility of an occurrence of an inconvenience such as running out of ink during printing.